by Michael Steil
Many have written about the supposed heretical, or at the very least, confusing statements spoken by Pope Francis. Many times, Francis has spoken words that have been a reverse of what Jesus has been recorded as having spoken by the Gospel writers. For example, when the woman was brought to Jesus who had been caught in the very act of adultery, Jesus answers: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,”1 are words so clear that the scribes and the Pharisees, who had brought the charge, were so dumbfounded that they left in shamed defeat; on the other hand, Francis the Merciful, when presented with a similar episode concerning homosexual unions, can only say, “Who am I to judge?”, thus confounding his own audience of faithful Catholics—while being celebrated by his own true followers—that being the secularists, the radical left, and the sodomites.
I am not writing this to rehash what most devout Catholic readers already are painfully aware, but to reveal what I consider a “heavenly” moment, or should I say moments, that Francis has encountered and appears to have pretty much disregarded as messages put directly in his path. As only God can truly read a heart, I am only speculating on what can be revealed by his outward actions.
As faithful Catholics, we already believe the Eucharist is the actual Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus, as expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas: “What our senses fail to fathom, we grasp through faith’s consent.” However, throughout the history of the Catholic Church, as many of us are aware, there have been many instances of Eucharistic miracles recorded in which the form of the consecrated host transforms into visible flesh and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ— not only flesh, but the interior flesh of a suffering heart—as if the heart had been dissected in half, as testified by cardiologists. 2
But, what if there have been some other Eucharistic miracles that have occurred in our present age that we have not been made aware of, or at least— they haven’t been made well known? And what could it possibly mean if five of these Eucharistic Miracles amazingly happened in the same parish? In addition, what would be the meaning if the prelate who happened to become Archbishop over this parish just so happened to be Jorge Mario Bergoglio?
So, the story goes, according to Dr. Franco Serafini:
Five miraculous events took place between 1992 and 1996, all of them in the same Buenos Aires parish. No human argument can explain this abundance of gifts: Couldn’t these miracles have been more “equitably” distributed around this world of ours, one that is so hungry for visible signs of God’s presence? It was as if the words of the glorified Christ of the Apocalypse were re-echoing: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Christ’s knocking at the same door in Buenos Aires had indeed been persistent.
Still, most people hardly know about these events, even in Argentina. In Italy, they have only been recently discussed after Pope Francis’s election and just since the media—Catholic bloggers in particular—shifted their focus to that diocese “at the end of the world” where Francis came from. One of the best Italian journalists, Maurizzio Blondet, spent two weeks in Buenos Aries in 2014 for an exclusive inquiry that then led to his book, A Heart for Eternal Life. 3 [Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been the new archbishop of Buenos Aries since 1998.]
Since Bergoglio has done inestimable damage to the Church, it is hard to speculate how we could have ended up with such a seemingly deceptive person as Pope? Then again, unfortunately, when the people are continually pulling away from God’s precepts, eventually God will give us what we truly desire, to our own detriment.
Now, with Traditionis Custodes, Francis has all but outlawed the Traditional Latin Mass of the ages, which truly is not news. However, to help us understand why this is happening, E. Michael Jones, assistant professor of American Literature at St. Mary’s College publisher and editor of Culture Wars magazine, has this to say about Vatican II:
The Novus Ordo Missae was never merely a translation of the Traditional Latin Mass. If it were merely a matter of language, then it would not be so controversial right now. Please do not take merely anecdotal evidence of rad trads to oversimplify what is a twisted tale in history and needs reiteration in a one-stop-shop format. The story of the many attempts to subvert Vatican II are now well-documented in books like The Rhine Flows into the Tiber and John Courtney Murray, Time, Life, and the CIA, and many others. What must be made clear though is that over 2,000 bishops never called for the end of the traditional rite and the composition of a new one.
Instead of regaining the initiative, the Catholic Church used the council which Ottaviani persuaded Pope John XXIII to convoke as a way of internalizing the commands of her oppressors. 4
To fully understand what Jones is saying here, we need to get to the heart of the issue, that is, who or what are the “oppressors”? Here is what Mr. Jones has to say about that:
Confirmation of Pope Benedict’s ambivalence comes from a statement issued by the Discussion Group “Jews and Christians” of the Central Committee of German Catholics issued on “Easter/ Pesach 2007” entitled The Disruption to Christian-Jewish Relations by the Re-establishment of the Tridentine Rite which claims that “the demand for the reinstatement of the Tridentine rite… is not really a question about the celebration of the Mass in Latin.” It is about the “anti-Semitic” prayers in the pre-1962 rite. Restoration of that Tridentine rite, the joint German-Jewish committee informs us would bring about “a lasting disruption to the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue that began so hopefully at the Second Vatican Council. Many dedicated personal and also theological efforts on both sides would be intentionally damaged. We hope that Pope Benedict XVI will not permit this injury to Christian-Jewish relations to occur.” The key word in that passage is “intentionally.”
The German-Jewish dialoguers were saying that Pope Benedict’s expansion of the Latin Mass was intended as an attempt to restore the historical continuity which was broken by the Jewish interpretation of Nostra Aetate. Ultimately, the question of intention is irrelevant. The fact that Ratzinger ignored this warning and re-instated the Latin Rite shows that he was fully aware of what he was doing and that the restoration of the Latin Mass was his passive-aggressive way of reopening the Jewish Question [from Vatican II]. 5
According to Jones, it was 13 years later when “the Jews complained to the Jesuits” about the reintroduction of the Latin Mass. On reading this we should be saying with concern: “Why should the Jews have anything to say about our Mass services?” To which Jones replies, “What looks like a catastrophe for the Latin Massers is really the cunning of reason. The Holy Spirit will not abandon His Church.” So, then as Jones states as a spiritual emollient, “God is using this crisis to expose the real problem which is, as Abe Foxman’s tweet made clear, Jewish control of the Catholic Church.” 6 (my emphasis)
The Abe Foxman (national director of the Anti-Defamation League) tweet that is being referred to is that, "We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday Mass, that it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted. This is a theological setback in the religious life of Catholics and a body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations. It is the wrong decision at the wrong time. It appears the Vatican has chosen to satisfy a right-wing faction in the Church that rejects change and reconciliation." 7 (my emphasis)
In addition, according to Jones, the Latin Mass disappeared a few days after the issuance of Traditionis Custodes when the Times of Israel announced that Pope Francis had restricted the use of the Latin Mass because it “calls for the conversion of the Jews” and referred to “Jewish ‘blindness.’” What Francis referred to as Vatican II comes down to Nostra Aetate, which comes down to the claim, unsupported by that document, that “the Jews were not guilty of killing Jesus.”
The Jews had determined that the suppression of the Latin Mass was necessary because, according to the same unsupported source, “Accusations that the Jews killed Jesus have long motivated anti-Semitic attacks.” 8
A timeline of official Catholic responses to the Jews would be that in 1965 the Second Vatican Council issued the document “Nostra Aetate” (“In Our Times”), which repudiates the notion of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus Christ’s death for the first time. This was followed in 1986 when Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope since the days of the early Church to visit a Jewish place of worship when he entered Rome’s synagogue. He then refers to the Jews as “our beloved elder brothers,” —and this is how I remember the Good Friday services when we would pray the “Solemn Intercessions.” So, while the Jews were the lineage that Jesus chose to be born from, they were also the ones who rejected and crucified Him, although they believe they incurred no guilt as a result of passing the death sentence to execute Jesus onto the Roman authorities in the person of Pontius Pilate. And in addition, they then turned their venomous hatred onto the followers of Jesus in order to eliminate any evidence of the Christ. Now, we pray for the “Jewish People,” although I am not clear what we are praying for.
As the plot thickens, according to Jones. Pope Francis chose unity as a higher good but for the wrong reasons, because of Jewish pressure exerted on the Jesuits, the Jews’ main group of proxy warriors in the Church of our day, bringing to light in a way that can only be described as the cunning of reason the real issue, which is the Jewish Question. Traditionis Custodes could be seen as an example of God countermanding the intentions of the actors in this drama in a way that not only preserves the Church from error but also focuses our attention on the real cause of disunity in the Church, which has gone unmentioned for far too long. 7
Although I think Mr. Jones is being too kind to believe that Francis was only trying to attain “unity,” or then again, maybe unity is the way to attain control? We also learn that George Soros’s Open Society Foundation has lavished $1.7 million on Jesuit NGOs over the past few years. To this, Jones does say that “The main issue which remains unresolved in the wake of Traditionis Custodes is the suppression of what people like Abe Foxman, who thanked the pope for suppressing the Latin Mass that would consider anti-Semitic texts in the liturgy.” 8
For anyone not aware, Jones mentions what is in the traditional rite for Tenebrae or Matins on Good Friday that just might be a little offensive to certain ears, the first lines being: “We know what secret counsel was that of the wicked Jews, and what insurrection was that of the workers of iniquity. Of what iniquity were they the workers? The murder of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Now, to get back to Francis and his encounters with Jesus in the Eucharist, again, we can’t know what is in his heart. But as related by Dr. Franco Serafini, “I was told that Cardinal Bergoglio himself used to visit St. Mary’s for an hour of Eucharistic adoration about once a year.” In addition, he added, “The parish also published a card showing Cardinal B seen from behind and turned in prayer toward the tabernacle behind the unmistakable four-petal monstrance. The comment that the current pope made after seeing himself on the card is written on the back: ‘This is the best picture of a bishop I have ever seen: it represents him the way he must be.’” 9 [B-t-W, Abe Foxman thanked the Bergoglio for suppressing the Latin Mass.]
If you ask me, a once-a-year visit to a verified Eucharistic miracle in the parish you oversee is not too convincing of your Catholic faith on any account. And from the evidence, it appears to be for publicity purposes, which could be the reason there has been almost no mention of it—in any aspect.
So, I am trying to understand how Bergoglio/ Francis could not see that the fact he was confronted by five instances of Eucharistic Miracles in his own parish, and except for a once-a-year visit, seems to be unaware that there is a possibility that maybe God was attempting to reach him? That maybe he needed to proclaim these miracles to the world upon becoming Pope? What a witness that would have been! However, we will probably never know what he was thinking. Then again, it doesn’t appear to be consequential, as witnessed by the way he has been governing the Church in a way that confounds the Catholic faithful, while seemingly “courting” the approval of the enemies of the Catholic Church—and therefore in effect—denying the Lord Jesus.
Sources
1. (John 8:7)
2. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles, Dr. Franco Serafini, Sophia Institute Press, 2021. The four chapters: The Heart, Blood, AB Blood Group, and The DNA
3. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus, 32
4. E. Michael Jones, Quis Custodiet Traditionis Custodes? or “Who Will Guard the Guards Themselves?” Sept. 2021, (available to read at https://culturewars.com/news/quis-custodiet-traditionis-custodes )
5. i.e. 34
6. i.e. 34
7. i.e. 34
8. i.e. 25
9. A Cardiologist, 53-54